T. F. Powys from The Sundial Press - Publishers and Republishers of Remarkable Original Fiction
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T. F. Powys ‘A thousand years of happiness can be found here in one moment’
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In the remote Dorset village of East Chaldon, T. F. POWYS (1875-1953) wrote a steady succession of novels, novellas, fables and short stories. These tales of startling originality and strange beauty offer wry observations on the human condition, the enigma of God, and arresting insights into the nature of good and evil, infused with subtle and dark humour of the rarest vintage. Originally published during the 1920s and 1930s, the works of novelist, fabulist and short story writer T.F.Powys are unlike anything else written before or since. Of his eight novels which were published during the years 1923-31 Mr Weston’s Good Wine (1927), for which he is best known, has been in and out of print since it was first published. The Sundial Press has now issued new editions of that novel’s two overlooked successors: Kindness in a Corner (1930) and Unclay (1931) featuring new Introductions by leading scholars.
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Theodore Francis Powys was born in 1875 at Shirley in Derbyshire, one of the eleven children of the Rev. Charles Powys, an Anglican clergyman of evangelical views. His family was predominantly Welsh but was also related to Donne and Cowper. T. F. Powys, unlike his elder brothers John Cowper and Llewelyn, did not go to Cambridge. Instead, for a short time, he farmed in Suffolk. Then, in 1901, he settled in a labourer's cottage at Studland on the Dorset coast, to live a life of contemplation on his father's allowance of £60 a year. In 1904 he moved to East Chaldon, also in Dorset, and in 1905 married Violet Rosalie Dodds. They had two sons, one of whom died in Kenya. Powys's first book was An Interpretation of Genesis, begun in 1904 and privately printed in 1908. In this he made use of the dialogue form, but it was only in 1916 that he turned to fiction, with Mr Tasker's Gods, an essay in realism published in 1925. In 1917 he wrote Black Bryony, published in 1923. He first became known as a writer with The Left Leg, a collection of three stories, in which his gift for the extended fable begins to emerge. This 'was followed by Mark Only (1924), Mockery Gap (1925) and Innocent Birds (1926). In 1927 came his best-known masterpiece, Mr Weston’s Good Wine, an allegory of good and evil in which Mr Weston figures as both wine-merchant and God. Another important book was Fables (1929), largely consisting of dialogues between commonplace objects, and animals. Kindness in a Corner was published in 1930, and in 1931 came The Only Penitent and the last full-length novel, Unclay. Throughout this period Powys was also writing short stories, four collections of which were later published. A comprehensive selection of them is to be found in God's Eyes A' Twinkle (1947). The same countryside, the same characters, recur from book to book. Within this context operates that startling awareness of men's actions and beliefs which, with his mastery of the humorous understatement and his great originality, marks all T. F. Powys's fiction. In 1940, with his writing career behind him, Powys moved to the quite village of Mappowder in North Dorset where he died in 1953. |
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From Unclay:
‘Tell me your name,’ asked Mr Hayhoe, who began to think that the poor man must have escaped from a madhouse, ‘so that, if I have the good fortune to discover your property, I may be able to restore to you what you have lost.’ ‘My name is Death,’ answered the man. ‘A Suffolk family?’ rejoined Mr Hayhoe, ‘for I know a village in that county where your name is common, and I have seen it too written upon a tombstone in this neighbourhood. But I trust you will not think me rude if I ask you to tell me your Christian name too?’ ‘I have never had one,’ replied Death simply, ‘though in coming here this morning I met a little girl who made fun of my beard and called me “John".’ |
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| Kindness in a Corner | Unclay | Durdle Door to Dartmoor | Still Blue Beauty | The Blackthorn Winter | Hester Craddock | ||||||
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Sundial plans to publish the Complete Fables in 2009. Click here to read Darkness and Nathaniel | ||||||||||
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